The red wet smear on the ground – #babysitting

The red wet smear on the ground – or – Whatever happened to my brother Steve and his wife?

To be honest, relations have always been on the un-smooth side with my younger half-brother Steve. With a point spread of 6 years between us, differing genders and the fact that his father and I detested each other with all the fervor of a Hatfield relating to a McCoy, it was a miracle that we got along at all.

He also didn’t really approve of my lifestyle choices – namely to get the heck out of Dodge and hightail it to sunny California and communal living – leaving him back in the swamps of New Jersey while I enjoyed the highlife of a peace-song-singing pseudo-hippie.

But once my life returned to something vaguely resembling ‘normality’ and I returned to Jersey (which isn’t anything at all like you see on horrid reality shows – honest!), I thought that things would improve.

And I had the twins, who in my admittedly biased opinion are nigh-on to irresistible! Surely he and his wife would love to get to know their cute little nieces.

I think that the continued strain may have been attributible to Steve’s lack of children, but they never mentioned it to me.

Still, they did visit a couple of times, even brought some nice gifts for the girls which they still play with. We even all went to the zoo once.

And then came that fateful day when they offered to babysit for a couple of hours so that Masa and I could have the first date in 3 years since the twins were born.

Supposedly all went well, Steve and Jeanette looked reasonably intact afterwards, perhaps a little on the shaky side, but that was the last we ever saw of them. Now they won’t return emails, phone messages, etc…

I am perplexed by this.

Now I frequently joke to people who suggest babysitters that the last two became red, wet smears on the ground and we never heard from them again 🙂

What else can I do except try to keep a good sense of humor?

Steve, Jeanette, if you’re out there and reading this – please let us know what’s up so we can try to mend any problems of which we were unaware.

We promise to never leave you alone with our kids if it was too much for you. The girls are much older now and somewhat more civilized and are finally out of their cannibalism phase – really!